Join BCF for Lone Tree Hill Volunteer Day April 26

 Environment, Lone Tree Hill, March/April 2025  Comments Off on Join BCF for Lone Tree Hill Volunteer Day April 26
Feb 272025
 
Join BCF for Lone Tree Hill Volunteer Day April 26

Join us in stewarding Lone Tree Hill! The Belmont Citizens Forum, in conjunction with the Judy Record Conservation Fund, is holding its eleventh annual cleanup and trail maintenance day on April 26, from 9 AM until noon. Help with the planting of white pine saplings near the Meadow Edge Trail, cleaning up and removal of invasives at the Mill Street parking lot and the Coal Road respectively. Students can earn community service credits. Bounded by Concord Avenue, Pleasant Street, and Mill Street, Lone Tree Hill spans 119 acres of permanently protected conservation land and is available to everyone. It is [READ MORE]

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Akebia (Chocolate Vine) Invades Belmont

 March/April 2025, Plants  Comments Off on Akebia (Chocolate Vine) Invades Belmont
Feb 272025
 
Akebia (Chocolate Vine) Invades Belmont

By Dean Hickman and Leonard Katz Akebia quinata, also known as chocolate vine, is an evergreen ground cover and climbing vine with compound leaves, typically having five leaflets with notched tips. It is invasive in our area, and has taken over as ground cover and climbed and smothered trees in two forested conservation areas in Belmont: Beaver Brook Reservation, northeast of the upper Mill Pond off Mill Street; and in the Pleasant Street area of Lone Tree Hill, across the brook from the Coal Road Trail, on the hill above the back entrance to the Star Market parking lot. Akebia [READ MORE]

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Restoration Resumes on Lone Tree Hill

 Environment, Lone Tree Hill, May/June 2024, Newsletter, Open Space, Plants  Comments Off on Restoration Resumes on Lone Tree Hill
Apr 302024
 
Restoration Resumes on Lone Tree Hill

By Jeffrey North and Joseph Hibbard A crew of 18 technicians, crew leaders, designer, and managers gathered on Lone Tree Hill early on the misty morning of March 15. They were there for the third and final day of their work season kick-off with a day of training on Belmont conservation land. The Land Management Committee (LMC) for Lone Tree Hill (LTH) had granted permission to allow the Parterre Ecological Services “Class of 2024” to conduct an invasive species removal training session for field technicians. Their target zone was a section of  the southeast corner of the Great Meadow. The [READ MORE]

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Lone Tree Hill Volunteer Day April 27

 BCF Events, Environment, March/April 2024  Comments Off on Lone Tree Hill Volunteer Day April 27
Mar 012024
 
Lone Tree Hill Volunteer Day April 27

Join us in stewarding Lone Tree Hill! The Belmont Citizens Forum, in conjunction with the Judy Record Conservation Fund, is holding its tenth annual cleanup and trail maintenance day on April 27, from 9 AM until noon. Help with planting white pine saplings along the Meadow Edge Trail, cleaning up, and removing invasives at the Mill Street parking lot and the Coal Road, respectively. Students can earn community service credits. Bounded by Concord Avenue, Pleasant Street, and Mill Street, Lone Tree Hill spans 119 acres of permanently protected conservation land and is available to everyone. It is stewarded through a [READ MORE]

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Lone Tree Hill Saw Improvements in 2023

 Environment, January 2024, Lone Tree Hill, McLean, Newsletter, Open Space, Plants  Comments Off on Lone Tree Hill Saw Improvements in 2023
Jan 052024
 
Lone Tree Hill Saw Improvements in 2023

By Radha Iyengar Belmont’s Lone Tree Hill Conservation area benefited from another year of conservation, restoration, and stewardship, thanks mainly to the efforts of the Land Management Committee for Lone Tree Hill (LMC). Many Belmontonians and visitors enjoy this 119-acre conservation property for walking, biking, viewing wildlife, and being out in nature. The LMC was created through a memorandum of agreement between the town and McLean Hospital in 1999. The agreement  outlined the development restrictions for the McLean Hospital campus. It also reserved approximately 119 acres of the campus as publicly accessible open space, including a new municipal cemetery, and [READ MORE]

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Lone Tree Hill Goes Native with Plantings

 Environment, Lone Tree Hill, Newsletter, Open Space, Plants, September/October 2023  Comments Off on Lone Tree Hill Goes Native with Plantings
Sep 012023
 
Lone Tree Hill Goes Native with Plantings

By Jeffrey North  On Earth Day 2023 (April 22), the Belmont Citizens Forum (BCF), in conjunction with the Judy Record Conservation Fund, held its ninth annual Lone Tree Hill Volunteer Day. (See “Volunteers Plant, Clean Up Lone Tree Hill,” BCF Newsletter, May/June 2023, for more information).  Several dozen volunteers rolled up their sleeves, and gardening trowels in hand, planted 350 plugs of young native plants in the Great Meadow and reclaimed meadow areas of Belmont’s Lone Tree Hill Conservation Land in addition to planting 40 white pine saplings to replace the mature pines gradually lost to age and weather. The [READ MORE]

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Unauthorized Bike Route and Vandalism at Lone Tree Hill

 Bicycles and bike paths, McLean, Newsletter, Open Space, Town Committee Meetings  Comments Off on Unauthorized Bike Route and Vandalism at Lone Tree Hill
Apr 302023
 
Unauthorized Bike Route and Vandalism at Lone Tree Hill

An unauthorized bike route off the Hillside Trail on the Lone Tree Hill, Belmont Conservation Land (LTH) property was reported on April 21, 2023. The route goes down a hill, over a rock ledge and lands below on a very steep hillside. The builders of the route cut down trees, broke branches, removed rocks and vegetation (trees and native perennial trout lily) from the hillside and excavated dirt by digging and leaving dangerous pits. There has been earlier unauthorized bike activity at Lone Tree Hill, but this is the most dangerous and damaging. At the ninth annual LTH volunteer day [READ MORE]

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Volunteers Plant, Clean Up at Lone Tree Hill

 May/June 2023, Newsletter  Comments Off on Volunteers Plant, Clean Up at Lone Tree Hill
Apr 262023
 
Volunteers Plant, Clean Up at Lone Tree Hill

By Radha Iyengar The Belmont Citizens Forum (BCF), in conjunction with the Judy Record Conservation Fund, held its ninth annual Lone Tree Hill Volunteer Day on Saturday, April 22, an overcast and cool day. Volunteers included Girl Scouts Troop 82027, employees of Cityside Subaru, M&T Bank,and the Sai Group, and residents of Belmont and the surrounding communities. Many hands made light work.   At the Pine Allee, efficient volunteers planted forty white pine saplings. The new plants replaced the Allee’s missing trees and some of the dead saplings from previous volunteer day plantings. At the adjacent meadow the volunteers planted slender [READ MORE]

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‘Chickadee Tree’ Sings on Lone Tree Hill

 Arts & Culture, January/February 2023  Comments Off on ‘Chickadee Tree’ Sings on Lone Tree Hill
Jan 042023
 
‘Chickadee Tree’ Sings on Lone Tree Hill

The Belmont Citizens Forum and the Land Management Committee for Lone Tree Hill (LMC) would like to remind readers that the installation of objects, decorations, signs or messaging of any kind on conservation or public land is prohibited without prior written permission of the LMC, Conservation Commission, or other Town authority having jurisdiction. By Yuval Gur Environmental degradation and climate-changing behaviors have been part of our lives for many years. Yet, we are still in crisis, whether from microplastics in our oceans, rising sea levels, air pollution, or diminishing living habitats. What if nature could signal us with flashing lights [READ MORE]

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Lone Tree Hill Restoration Hit 2022 Milestones

 Environment, January/February 2023, Lone Tree Hill, Newsletter, Open Space, Plants  Comments Off on Lone Tree Hill Restoration Hit 2022 Milestones
Jan 032023
 
Lone Tree Hill Restoration Hit 2022 Milestones

By Jeffrey North In 2020, the Land Management Committee for Lone Tree Hill (LMC) and the Judy Record Conservation Fund began a multi-year campaign to restore native plant communities in prioritized areas of the Lone Tree Hill conservation land. Step one in the restoration was to bring the invasive plant species under control. Planting natives would be a wasted effort and expense if they cannot compete with the pernicious plants that have come to occupy large swaths of our conservation lands and private yards.  The work began with a broad brush, property-wide restoration survey conducted by ecological design professionals in [READ MORE]

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Why Care About Removing Invasive Plants?

 Environment, November 2022, Open Space, Plants  Comments Off on Why Care About Removing Invasive Plants?
Oct 312022
 
Why Care About Removing Invasive Plants?

By Joseph Hibbard and Jeffrey North The Belmont Citizens Forum Newsletter has been printing articles about the perils and poisons of non-native invasive plant species on these pages for years. Readers have learned that garlic mustard changes the chemistry of the soil to gain an advantage over other plant species in forest and edge areas. Our article on black swallowwort described that plant’s deadly toxicity to Monarch butterfly larvae that mistakenly consume it instead of nourishing native milkweed. We have described how Asiatic bittersweet rapidly climbs native trees, blocks the sunlight, and eventually topples the tree while changing our viewsheds. [READ MORE]

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Spare a Thought for Lone Tree Hill

 Environment, Lone Tree Hill, Newsletter, Open Space, Plants, Sept/Oct 2022  Comments Off on Spare a Thought for Lone Tree Hill
Sep 092022
 
Spare a Thought for Lone Tree Hill

By Dean Hickman and Leonard Katz  Between Pleasant Street and Trapelo Road to the south, Concord Avenue to the north, and Mill Street to the west, Lone Tree Hill wraps around McLean Hospital and sits above Belmont, providing us with a peaceful and secluded mix of woods and meadows where we can escape the hustle and bustle of suburban life down below. It is also Belmont’s gateway to Rock Meadow on the other side of Mill Street as well as to the more secluded trails of the Western Greenway which head west into neighboring Waltham and Lexington. Anyone looking for [READ MORE]

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Restoration Resumes on Lone Tree Hill

 Environment, July-August 2022, Lone Tree Hill, Newsletter, Open Space  Comments Off on Restoration Resumes on Lone Tree Hill
Jun 202022
 
Restoration Resumes on Lone Tree Hill

By Jeffrey North A crew of field horticulture technicians returned to the Lone Tree Hill conservation area for their first visit in 2022 on May 20. Begun in late 2020, the work to enhance the ecological integrity of Belmont’s 80-acre conservation land site addresses the most egregious infestations of biodiversity-erasing invasive plant species. (See Restoration Projects Approved for Lone Tree Hill, BCF Newsletter, May 2021) The mission this time was to cut or pull and spray garlic mustard in bloom. As garlic mustard is one of the first plants to start actively growing in late March, leaves can be sprayed [READ MORE]

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Lone Tree Hill Volunteers Clean, Weed, Plant

 Environment, Lone Tree Hill, May/June 2022, Newsletter, Open Space, Plants  Comments Off on Lone Tree Hill Volunteers Clean, Weed, Plant
May 052022
 
Lone Tree Hill Volunteers Clean, Weed, Plant

By Radha Iyengar On Saturday, April 30, a sunny but cool day, BCF, in conjunction with the Judy Record Conservation Fund, held its eighth annual Lone Tree Hill Volunteer Day.  At the Pine Allee, volunteers planted 46 white pine saplings of which 40 saplings were store bought and 6 were transplants from Lone Tree Hill. The new plants replaced some of the Allee’s missing trees as well as some of the dead saplings from the 2017-2019 volunteer day plantings. At the other end of the property, the volunteers collected 11 bags of trash, one box of recyclables and six bags [READ MORE]

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Lone Tree Hill Cleanup Saturday, April 30

 BCF Events, Lone Tree Hill, March/April 2022, Newsletter, Open Space  Comments Off on Lone Tree Hill Cleanup Saturday, April 30
Mar 032022
 
Lone Tree Hill Cleanup Saturday, April 30

Lone Tree Hill Cleanup Saturday, April 30 Join us in stewarding Lone Tree Hill! After a two-year hiatus, the Belmont Citizens Forum, in conjunction with the Judy Record Conservation Fund, is holding its eighth annual tree planting, cleanup, and trail maintenance day on Saturday, April 30, from 9 AM to noon. For more information, email bcfprogramdirector@gmail.com. Help complete the planting of saplings along the Pine Allee, cleaning up at the Mill Street parking lot and the Coal Road area, and removing invasive species on the property. Students can earn community service credits. Bounded by Concord Avenue, Pleasant Street, and Mill [READ MORE]

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A Tribute to a Conservationist

 Environment, Lone Tree Hill, March/April 2022, Newsletter, Open Space, Town Committee Meetings  Comments Off on A Tribute to a Conservationist
Mar 032022
 
A Tribute to a Conservationist

By Anne Paulsen, Martha Moore, and Heli Tomford with contributions from neighbors Nanny Almquist, Jacquie Dow, and other Belmont friends and committee colleagues who knew and worked with Joan Campbell. When Joan Louise Campbell died on December 15, 2016, Belmont lost a citizen whose life exemplified devotion to her community, especially its open spaces. Joan moved to Belmont with her parents in the late 1930s, and except for some years working as a librarian in Seattle, she lived in the same Prospect Street home for most of her 92 years. We are honoring Joan Campbell because of her involvement in [READ MORE]

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Belmont’s Invasive Species: Glossy Buckthorn

 Environment, January 2022, Lone Tree Hill, Newsletter, Plants  Comments Off on Belmont’s Invasive Species: Glossy Buckthorn
Jan 042022
 
Belmont's Invasive Species: Glossy Buckthorn

By Joe Hibbard Take a walk on the north side of the Great Meadow at the Lone Tree Hill Conservation Land and you might notice some recent changes in the landscape. A broad area along both sides of the Pitch Pine Trail, which was until recently an impenetrable thicket of invasive plants, is being cleared and on its way to a healthier forest/meadow edge landscape. The clearing is part of a long-term project to restore ecological balance to degraded landscapes that are part of the Lone Tree Hill Conservation Land. The project is led by the Land Management Committee for [READ MORE]

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Lone Tree Hill Restoration Shows Strong Start

 Environment, January 2022, Lone Tree Hill, Newsletter, Open Space, Plants  Comments Off on Lone Tree Hill Restoration Shows Strong Start
Jan 042022
 
Lone Tree Hill Restoration Shows Strong Start

By Jeffrey North Late last year, field technicians engaged by the  Land Management Committee for Lone Tree Hill (LMC) and the Judy Record Conservation Fund began a multiyear campaign to restore select parcels of the Lone Tree Hill conservation land. These stewardship projects focused first on invasive plant removal at Area A1. Restoration specialists from Parterre Ecological Services hand-cut the bittersweet vines that were smothering the trees there and deployed a forestry mower to obliterate (if only temporarily) the buckthorn and multiflora rose.  The forestry mowing radically altered the appearance of that portion of the property, prompting the few visitors to ask if [READ MORE]

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Belmont Day School Cleans Up Lone Tree Hill

 Newsletter  Comments Off on Belmont Day School Cleans Up Lone Tree Hill
Jun 252021
 
Belmont Day School Cleans Up Lone Tree Hill

Nineteen students and three teachers from Belmont Day School spent the morning of May 19 removing invasive garlic mustard and trash from Belmont’s Lone Tree Hill. The bags of garlic mustard and trash were collected by Belmont’s Department of Public Works. Thank you to everyone who pitched in to help keep Belmont beautiful!

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